


like a patient etherized upon a table

by an_ardent_rain



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, Season/Series 05, Vessel Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-13
Updated: 2012-09-13
Packaged: 2017-11-14 03:39:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 488
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/510930
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/an_ardent_rain/pseuds/an_ardent_rain
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jimmy doesn't talk to him anymore.</p>
            </blockquote>





	like a patient etherized upon a table

They only have to say yes, Zachariah said once.  They don't always have to mean it.

Castiel hadn't known what Zachariah meant, then.  Xe knows now.

_Take me_ , he begged.  And Castiel did take him, stole his body and his life.  Having an angel inside, he'd said, was like being chained to a comet.  Castiel remembers being that comet.  Castiel used to burn.

Castiel curls strong fingers that used to belong to Jimmy Novak and thinks  _these are mine now._ Castiel does not know how to think about himself when he has never before had a self to think about.  Now he has flesh and bones and blood and the body of a man.  No longer is he fury, or radiant heavenly light.  He is hunger and boredom and grief and pettiness - and the curve of his spine, the callouses of his feet, the stubble of his jaw, the weight of his dick between his legs.  

Jimmy used to talk to him, sometimes.  He became bitterness, became the small spark behind Castiel's eyes, burning and aching in nothing but his consciousness, slowly fading as Castiel carved himself into Jimmy's bones.  Jimmy spit his explanations out when Castiel asked like they were poison.  What am I without my body he'd said, I am my body.  Our body Castiel answered, the words dusty thick in his throat, and he ignores for a moment that the thought is painful.

_This body is a cage._  He runs one hand down his face, feels the brush of his lashes against his fingers, the burn of the hair on his cheeks he still needs to shave, and the wetness of his spit as his lip is pulled down with his fingers.  

The air presses against him, stuffy and warm.  His back aches with the weight of his torn, withered wings.  He can't fly anymore.  But he can feel.  He knows how itchy his clothes are and how pain makes his body seize and how anger lights him up in streaky, compact flames.  He is not multitudinous or many - there isn't any song, not anymore, not where he can hear it.  He touches his ear, listens to the sound of cars rolling by on the highway, realizes the pressure in his bladder means he might have to piss soon, reassures himself that in the end this will all be worth it.

_Claire has my eyes_ Jimmy told him, because Claire is his daughter, is made from him, with eyes as brilliant and blue as her fathers.  She can have them, he'd told Jimmy, cruel and acerbic. Her eyes, he'd said.  She can have them.  They could have been Castiel's eyes.  They are, he thinks wildly.  They are his eyes, the same as hers, and he would pluck them out of his head, give them to Claire,  _return_  them, because she'll never see her father looking out of them again.

Jimmy doesn't talk to him anymore.


End file.
